Kosher Corned Beef On The Emerald Isle: Rabbi Zalman & Rifky Lent

00:00 Speaker 1 So we're on the main road, and I have, like, a PA system with a microphone

00:04 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Zalman Lent, Chabad Shliach, along with his wife Rivky, to Dublin, Ireland.

00:10 Speaker 1 And I said, "If anybody needs a Hanukkah menorah kit, just step forward, and we'd be happy to give you one."

00:17 Speaker 2 As the Lents distributed menorah kits that Hanukkah in 2005, a stranger approached.

00:23 Speaker 1 And he's all, like, shaken, and, and and I says, "Everything okay?" He said, "You don't understand what just happened. I only landed this morning from the States." He said, "I was walking down the street, and I was just thinking to myself, 'Are there Jews in Ireland? How on earth am I going to find a menorah?'"

00:40 Speaker 2 You, dear listener, already know the answer to that question. What the man hadn't known is that the Lents are always ready to provide for the needs of every Jew in Dublin, be they resident or visitor. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.

02:25 Speaker 3 Yeah, I always wanted to go on shlichus.

02:26 Speaker 2 Rivky Lent grew up in London's Stamford Hill neighborhood. Her brother, Yitzi, is Chabad Shliach to Copenhagen, Denmark, featured on an earlier Lamplighters episode. Their parents, Tali and Miriam Lowenthal, are well-known Chabad shluchim and academics. Rabbi Tali has taught Torah for decades.

02:47 Speaker 3 When I was about 14 or 15, I would go with him to the West End of London to this person's home, where he would give a class every week. So that was probably my first exposure to shlichus as a thing, um, although, of course, my parents also had a very open home, and we always had guests for Shabbats and, and for Yom Tov meals. You know, the example that my parents set, this is what I wanted to do.

03:08 Speaker 2 Rivky attended Beis Rivkah in Crown Heights, and she worked in Chabad houses in New York and London, assisting Chabad shluchim there. Zalman Lent is from Manchester, England, a former industrial city located about 200 miles to the north of London. Lent says he had a wonderful childhood.

03:29 Speaker 1 I was living in the present. I wasn't one of those kids that my dream was to be a rabbi or a shliach. No, that, that wasn't something I was thinking about.

03:39 Speaker 2 But Lent says it was assumed that he'd attend yeshiva, which he did in Montreal and Melbourne, Australia. He went on to merkuh shlichus in Melbourne, Brisbane, New Caledonia, and to New Zealand, where one experience cemented his resolve to become an official Chabad shliach.

03:58 Speaker 1 We were in, uh, Wellington in New Zealand, and we'd given out these really nice silver Shabbos candlesticks to the women and to the girls. We went back the next year, and this little girl comes running down the street. She must've been six or seven, and she saw us walking, and she comes running down, and she said, "You know, I'm still lighting that Shabbat candlestick that you gave me last year." And a year later, you realize this has changed this little kid's life, and, uh, yeah, I think it's a bit addictive.

04:29 Speaker 2 Lent earned smicha almost 30 years ago. He met Rivky in London shortly afterward.

04:35 Speaker 3 He's from Manchester, and I'm from London, two very different places, but despite those major differences, we still met.

04:44 Speaker 2 And they hit it off right away.

04:46 Speaker 1 We actually got engaged one week after meeting for the first time.

04:50 Speaker 2 Zalman and Rivky Lent were married in 1998. They moved to Crown Heights, where he studied in kollel, and she taught at a Persian school on Long Island. Zalman had been talking about relocating on shlichus to a faraway place, maybe New Zealand, Thailand, or Singapore.

05:09 Speaker 3 And I said, "Well, you know, if we go to those places, it's gonna be, like, really far from our families, and I'm not very good at learning foreign languages."

05:17 Speaker 2 Rivky wanted an English-speaking destination closer to family. Then one day, when Zalman was in kollel-

05:24 Speaker 1 Someone came in and said that there's some kind of opportunity in Ireland.

05:31 Speaker 3 Okay, that's great. They speak English there.

05:33 Speaker 1 That's for us, and I just jumped up, and I ran to Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky's, alav ha-shalom, his office, and I said, "Tell me about Ireland."

05:41 Speaker 2 The Lents learned that Dublin's Jewish community needed help.

05:45 Speaker 3 Dublin is a really beautiful place. It's not a very big city. There's maybe two million people in the wider Dublin area, so it's a small community of, like, maybe a couple of thousand Jews, and they're mostly descended from people who had fled from Lithuania in about 1870. So these were the descendants, and probably kind of a slightly aging community.

06:06 Speaker 2 Many of Dublin's younger families were leaving for bigger cities.

06:10 Speaker 1 The Jewish community here had been kinda hemorrhaging people There was a bit of panic. They'd sold one of the beautiful old shuls, the Adelaide Road Synagogue. It was an amalgamation of communities, and they said, "Okay, let's do something to stop the hemorrhaging."

06:27 Speaker 2 What the greater Jewish community of Dublin wanted was for a young couple to work with then Chief Rabbi, Gavin Broder, focusing on the city's youth.

06:37 Speaker 3 So we came for an interview. They liked us, and we liked them.

06:40 Speaker 1 I still don't know why, but immediately felt like it was the right thing for us.

06:45 Speaker 2 The Lents arrived in Dublin in the summer of 2000 as junior rabbi and rebbetzin of the Dublin Hebrew Congregation.

06:54 Speaker 1 Both representing Chabad as shluchim, but also working for the community.

06:58 Speaker 3 Basically, our salary was paid by the community. They provided us with a house and a car and a budget, so we could basically just do whatever we wanted without really worrying about raising any money.

07:10 Speaker 1 Our intense focus was activities for the children, for the students, for anyone, you know, under 50, or under 40 anyway, doing as many events as we could for the young people.

07:21 Speaker 2 Some in the community had questioned why Dublin needed Chabad emissaries, fearing that the Lents might have their own agenda.

07:28 Speaker 1 You know, this kind of mystery, what is Chabad really doing here?

07:32 Speaker 2 But the Lents saw things differently.

07:35 Speaker 1 You know, it's just a young couple who are 24/7 available as a contact point for Jewish people looking for anything to do with Yiddishkeit. It doesn't matter whether it's a, a study class or a Shabbos meal, or it's a fill-in or a bris. It doesn't matter.

07:49 Speaker 2 Dublin's Jewish community already had strong infrastructure. There was a shul, a Jewish school, an old age home, charitable organization, chevra kadisha, and other resources. They had a strong relationship with Rabbi Yaakov Perelman, who had assumed the role of chief rabbi shortly after the Lents arrived in 2000. Over the next eight years, the Lents inspired the city's Jews to engage.

08:17 Speaker 3 We ran summer camps, and we ran programs for Yom Tov and Hebrew school, like, all sorts of different things.

08:23 Speaker 1 More events for the wider community, and just things like Purim events and Hanukkah events would have been maybe sometimes handful of people. But once they were organized properly, you know, you could have a couple of hundred people coming.

08:38 Speaker 2 One of Zalman Lent's roles was rabbi of Dublin's main synagogue, which put him right at the nexus point for all of Dublin's Jews.

08:47 Speaker 1 So I saw it as this, like, amazing synergy, that you have, you know, people contacting the shul, and then people also contacting Chabad, and everybody's brought together into the same community, which is what happened. Everyone benefits.

09:02 Speaker 2 Soon, the Lents' work as community shluchim began to reverse the trend of young Jews and families leaving Dublin, and they were bringing back members of the older generation who had drifted away. Zalman and Rivkie learned that just a kind word or gesture could make all the difference.

09:20 Speaker 3 There was this good friend of ours, and it was her son's bar mitzvah. And her sister, who was very unaffiliated with the community then at that point, she came to shul with her two small children, and she was trying to listen to her nephew laying his piece from the Torah, and the baby started making noise. She got some unpleasant looks and comments from different people, but I came up to her just to make her feel better about the situation.

09:43 Speaker 2 Rivkie doesn't remember exactly what she told the woman, but years later, she learned from her what would have happened if Rivkie hadn't spoken a few kind words to her.

09:54 Speaker 3 She would have left, and she would never have come back.

09:57 Speaker 2 That woman currently serves on the board of the Lent's Chabad house. Until recently, Dublin was a very popular tourist destination, but it wasn't exactly the first on the list as a destination for frum Jews. Sometimes that didn't matter. One day in 2008, Rabbi Lent took an overseas call.

10:22 Speaker 1 From a young man from Porto, Portugal, and he said he's, uh, he's looking for a shidduch. He was like a traditional, like a frum boy, and, uh, he realized there was not much opportunity for him in Portugal, and he was coming to Ireland. So I said, "Well, if you're looking for a frum, like, Shomer Shabbat Jewish girl, maybe Dublin is the wrong place for you. There's a very, very, very small community here. It's only, like, a couple of thousand people. So why are you planning to come here?" He said, "Well, it was the cheapest plane ticket I could find."

10:51 Speaker 2 60 euros, to be exact.

10:53 Speaker 1 So he arrives in the middle of that week, and at the time, we were running a student center, like an accommodation center for students. So I said to him, "Look, take the bus, go to the student center, and come for Shabbos." And then that Friday afternoon, we get a call from a young woman from the States who had been doing a tour of Europe.

11:12 Speaker 2 She was on her way back to the US, but during the flight, an engine fire forced the plane to make an emergency landing in Dublin. Can you see where the story's going?

11:22 Speaker 1 I said, "That's fine. Go to the student house. Come for Shabbos." The two of them came. They were at our Shabbos table, and a couple of months later, I was at their wedding in the States.

11:31 Speaker 2 Stories like these confirmed to the Lents that their decision to locate in Dublin was a good one, because helping just one Jew, or in this case two, could make a major impact in the wider community.

11:44 Speaker 1 So there was definitely a great sense of life and reinvigoration and rejuvenation, and we're super grateful that we were a part of that.

11:55 Speaker 2 In 2008, Rabbi Yaakov Perelman retired, and the Lent's roles changed from youth rabbi and rebbetzin to rabbi and rebbetzin of the whole community. As such, the Lents enjoyed a certain latitude to operate as they wished for the next 14 years, but their work did come with some restraints.

12:16 Speaker 3 I think the thing that we didn't really have was just kind of, like, independence to do, like, very big projects.

12:22 Speaker 2 Budget committees had sometimes limited some of the activities the Lents had pushed for. But about four years ago, with the blessings of the community, the Lentz left their official posts as community rabbi and rebbetzin. Rabbi Yoni Wieder took over as chief rabbi, and the Lentz were free to emphasize a fully Chabad approach to community-building. They opened Dublin's first official Chabad House, featuring two new resources that quickly became local institutions. The local supermarket had closed its kosher section, so the Lentz created their own kosher store, featuring meats, wine, cheeses, and dry goods from Israel and around the world. It's the only kosher shop in Ireland.

13:09 Speaker 3 People come in, maybe they've come to buy challah, or they've come in to buy some bamba or some falafel, but we can then talk to them and say, "You know, we have a Hebrew school. Would you like to come to that?"

13:19 Speaker 1 And suddenly we're making contact with them, which I would never have met as a rabbi at the shul. They just would never step into the shul, but they're happy to come in and buy a challah for Shabbos, and chat with the rabbi, and put on tefillin.

13:30 Speaker 2 And the Lentz opened Deli 613. It's been a success from the outset, offering eclectic kosher food, from Ashkenaz to Mizrahi.

13:40 Speaker 1 It's powerful when you see someone completely disconnected from the Jewish community for maybe 50 years, and then they come in, and they taste something. They say, "Oh, my gosh, this is exactly like the food that my bubbe used to make, and we used to have at Shabbos." And people almost with tears in their eyes, just awakens that spark, and, and the hope is that it's not just food, that they start with the food, and then they come inside, and they get comfortable coming back into the Jewish community.

14:02 Speaker 2 Deli 613, with its welcoming indoor and outdoor spaces, also serves as a nexus point for anyone curious about Jewish food, culture, and worldview.

14:14 Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, there's non-Jews who come in every single day. One of our hopes when we opened the deli was that this would be a place where non-Jews could actually kind of be exposed to Judaism.

14:24 Speaker 1 Let them come in and taste Jewish food, meet some Jewish people, kind of break down some of those barriers.

14:29 Speaker 2 Among those enjoying the salt beef sandwiches, corned beef for those listening outside of Ireland, have been a former Irish prime minister and several famous actors. The deli and store also cater, providing Dublin's Jewish school and Jewish visitors with kosher meals, and there are plans to open a bakery. The Lentz use the proceeds to fund some of their programs, but they say they're not yet turning a profit. Part of the reason is the backlash against Ireland's Jewish community, and Jewish communities everywhere, after October 7th.

15:06 Speaker 1 It became so strong in Ireland, this kind of like a force field, that you had to be saying negative things about Israel, that the two merged together, and it was, "Okay, we can't go to the Jewish deli. We may be seen as doing something Israeli." Yeah, so that's had a massive effect.

15:22 Speaker 2 But despite the relatively recent anti-Israel backlash, and Ireland's reputation as one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe, the Lentz say they haven't experienced much negativity.

15:34 Speaker 3 I've experienced a lot more anti-Semitism in Crown Heights than I have ever in Ireland. Very occasionally, people will shout stupid things like, "Free Palestine," but mostly it's just people not coming in because they can't go to that place that, uh, supports Israel or whatever.

15:49 Speaker 1 I walk around with a yarmulke, and a beard, and hat, and jacket, and there's very, very little negativity. If people do come over, it's often supportive and positive. Being here, I, I think, has been very wonderful.

16:02 Speaker 2 Since the Lentz arrival in 2000, they've helped reverse the flow of Jewish youth out of Dublin. They recently purchased a building that will soon become a new center for students and young professionals. Now, the Jewish community is holding steady at about 3,000, and in the last 10 years or so, there's been an influx of hundreds of young Israeli families and singles, a large percentage of whom work in the tech industry.

16:30 Speaker 4 I was born in Jerusalem, raised in Jerusalem.

16:33 Speaker 2 That's Sharon Heymov, a user experience, user interface professional working in the field of public safety. She's raising a family with her Israeli husband, also a tech specialist.

16:46 Speaker 4 And, uh, my husband, Roy. He works here in Dublin.

16:49 Speaker 2 Rory? That doesn't sound like an Israeli name.

16:52 Speaker 4 Roy. Roy.

16:53 Speaker 2 Roy? Oh, okay. I thought you said Rory.

16:56 Speaker 4 No. Rory is an Irish name.

16:59 Speaker 2 Sharon and Roy have been married for 10 years. They moved to Ireland five years ago. Did you move to Dublin with the idea that you'd go looking for a Jewish experience there?

17:10 Speaker 4 No, not at all. I actually thought that it will kick me even away from my religious experience because I didn't think that there is even a community here. You know, you don't hear much about Jewish Irish people.

17:27 Speaker 2 Roy comes from a religious background, Sharon less so. She says that in Israel she always felt like Judaism was pushed on her, and she didn't like that, but one day...

17:38 Speaker 4 I was eating my sandwich, and I started speaking with Rivkie, and she was amazing. We spoke about spiritual things that made me understand that our religion can be very beautiful without forcing you to do things that you're not comfortable with. And what Rivkie did made me feel most Jewish now than I ever felt.

18:03 Speaker 2 Sharon was dealing with a health issue, and like so many Israelis and non-Israelis, was still traumatized by the events of October 7th. But the opportunity to share her concerns with Rivkie inspired Sharon to learn more, and to do more at the Lentz Chabad House.

18:21 Speaker 4 And I found out that it's not only a safe place, no one judge you for being who you are. That's what made me continue coming there.

18:33 Speaker 2 Sharon says that one mitzvah has led to others for her and Roei and their two children. The Hemoff's son is studying in the Lent's cheder, and attending their summer camp. And Sharon recently did a first-time mitzvah, which dispelled the myth that in Judaism women are second-class citizens.

18:52 Speaker 4 That was the first time I ever in my life had the blessing on the lulav and the etrog, and it was so amazing to understand that I can do that as a woman. And I think that here I got a sense of how the Jewish religion respect women, and I think that what I got from the Lents is that we're actually very, very important, and that's what made me fall in love with the Jewish religion, that I kept coming back. I had more and more things that I said, "Oh, okay, that's amazing."

19:27 Speaker 2 Sharon and family frequently visit Deli 613. She gives the pizza, falafel, hummus, and sabich very high marks. That's impressive considering she's from Israel. But when I ask her for a favorite dish, she admits with some hesitation that it's not something from the Middle Eastern menu.

19:47 Speaker 4 So if you ask me a salted beef sandwich, without the Russian dressing, but with the pickles and everything, I'm telling you, it's, it's very good food. It's a special food.

19:57 Speaker 5 And they do the best chips, would you believe-

20:00 Speaker 2 That's Simon Harrison, a native Dubliner with a taste for chips, also known to North Americans as french fries

20:07 Speaker 5 ... my kids would say so as well. But I think, honestly, I think it's all great. My daughter loves the salt beef. We go most Sundays and sit out and eat, and it's lovely. It's really, really nice.

20:16 Speaker 2 Simon is a program manager for an American tech company. He was born and raised in Dublin, and grew up in a traditional Jewish family, and attended the Jewish school there. He said he was always involved in Jewish life in Dublin, but felt the community wanted to keep its Jewishness a secret.

20:35 Speaker 5 Everything was insular. You know, we didn't really display our Judaism publicly.

20:39 Speaker 2 Simon says he hadn't been very familiar with Chabad until some 25 years ago when he first met Rabbi Lent.

20:47 Speaker 5 One of the things I admired about Rabbi Lent is his just unshakable confidence and commitment.

20:54 Speaker 2 One of Lent's demonstrations of Chabad chutzpah came not long after Simon met the Lents.

21:00 Speaker 5 The concept of a public menorah lighting caused a huge discussion within the community. I was quite nervous about it, but I remember he was just absolutely dogged and determined that, "Nope, this is what we're gonna do, and we're gonna be proud, and we're gonna be loud, and we're gonna go out there." And I went, and it was fantastic.

21:19 Speaker 2 The Lent's approach to Judaism inspired Simon to attend Shabbos meals, holiday celebrations, and Torah learning classes. That continued through college, marriage, and the raising of two daughters. But Simon says Jewish Dubliners really began to come together when the Lents opened their Chabad house a few years ago.

21:41 Speaker 5 It seemed like no matter how many people went, the space grew to accommodate. Chairs would come from nowhere. It was miraculous in some senses.

21:50 Speaker 2 You just gave me a possible title for this episode, and maybe even for a book about Chabad. Chairs came from nowhere.

21:58 Speaker 5 They do. They do. Actually, I was in their house for Shavuot recently. It was the same thing.

22:03 Speaker 2 Now, Simon says he can't imagine life in Dublin without Chabad of Ireland.

22:09 Speaker 5 It's just become part of the fabric of the community. It's not just a Jewish institution, it's a Dublin institution, an Irish institution.

22:16 Speaker 2 As the Dublin community grows and engages, the Lents are busier than ever. They've already run successful Pesach Seders in Cork, and they're looking into programs for Belfast.

22:29 Speaker 3 Maybe we'd like to hire more shluchim because, you know, there's a lot of things that need to be done, and not enough hours in the day. It feels like there's Yom Tov every few weeks, and and then summer camps and then this and that, so there's always, like, something to do.

22:44 Speaker 2 26 years into their Dublin adventure, the Lents occasionally have the time to look beyond the details of running a Chabad house and raising a family to reflect on the big picture of what they and their community have accomplished together.

22:59 Speaker 1 There's been an enormous surge of people needing to reconnect, students and young professionals wanting to come back. This is their safe space. They can come on a Friday night to the Chabad House, and they can have a wonderful Shabbos meal, and they can just feel the joy of being Jewish i- in a Jewish environment, coming to a Jewish venue and eating Jewish food and chatting.

23:20 Speaker 2 Zalman Lent says that when it comes to building their community, Rivkie and he have no magic formula. On the contrary, what they do is quite simple.

23:30 Speaker 1 Some of the most inspirational moments are by not trying at all, just walking the street, looking visibly Jewish, or approaching someone at the supermarket checkout and saying, "Oh, hi. Are you Jewish? Would you like to come for a Shabbos meal?" It's just about being available, and this I always see as the Rebbe's vision, that if you just plant a couple that are warm and open and have ahavat Yisrael in every corner of the world, there's just gonna be an enormous success rate of people looking to make contact.

24:00 Speaker 2 That approach certainly worked to help Sharon Hemoff adopt her new view of Yiddishkeit.

24:06 Speaker 4 I never thought I will find my identity as a Jewish person in Ireland. I think I found the exact Judaism that I was looking for because of the Lents. If Chabad will continue doing what the Lent does, that's when the Mashiach will come. When you'll find your true Jewish self, that's when it happens.

24:32 Speaker 3 We're doing what the Rebbe wants us to do, that's all.

24:35 Speaker 1 I think that's world-changing.

24:41 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolk. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.